How Can I Look Amazing On LinkedIn?

As I referred to on a previous post (LinkedIn? Locked Out More Like) many people join LinkedIn because they have heard it is an important place to be. But with no real knowledge about how LinkedIn really works a large number of users fail to reap the real benefit of LinkedIn. As a business professional LinkedIn is a great personal branding tool, a fantastic way to network, nurture existing business relationships and even source and develop new business opportunities. So it may be worth investing more time in developing your LinkedIn profile and demonstrating why you are “Amazing” at doing what you do!

Here are 15 things to make you look more Amazing on LinkedIn:

Make sure your profile is 100% complete. (Good photo and well written bio). Spend time writing your summary. Make sure it clearly explains what you do and highlights your experience. Ensure that it will attract the attention of your prospective customers and make you as an individual stand out above your competition. Invest in a professional photo that represents the “business” you. (No Facebook style photos!)

Why not rename “My Company” to the name of your company eg. “Careers Coach Website” and add your Twitter, Blog or even a link to your Facebook Business page (if appropriate) to your profile.

Rearrange your Linkedin profile to stand out. You may want your “Amazing” blog to be towards the top of the page and not at the bottom. Here is a link to show you how to move you sections around – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG6nJ_SVg

Update your status once or twice per day. Every time you update your status on LinkedIn it shows up on your connections feed. So regular relevant updates can ensure that you will not be forgotten by your connections. NB. Warning -Too many updates can have a negative effect and may annoy the very people you are hoping to impress. I would suggest that you never link your Twitter account to update automatically with LinkedIn. I recently “disconnected” with an individual whose status was updated 20 + times a day via Twitter and discussed irrelevant info such as what he was having for dinner.

Always personalise your LinkedIn invitations. If you want to connect with someone show them the courtesy of writing a personalised invitation telling them why you want to connect and what value you can offer them.

Convert as many business contacts on your offline database online to LinkedIn. Every relevant business card you receive, take the time out to connect with them on LinkedIn.

Build up a number of quality recommendations. Ask every happy customer or client to recommend you. Many people’s recommendations are limited to work colleagues and friends. These recommendations are far less impressivethan ones from your customers.

Join and participate in relevant Groups. Eg. If you are an expert in Environmental Engineering find groups in that sector. You will never get noticed unless you participate in the group. Start discussions, share your blog posts, ask questions and comment on other people’s posts. Be Amazing and showcase your expertise.

10. Demonstrate your capability by answering questions.

11. Add slides or even video to your LinkedIn profile using Slide Share. (www.slideshare.net) or Google Docs. You could really stand out by adding a professional Video showcasing your talent to your profile.

12. Use the Events section to find relevant offline events. LinkedIn may be an online social media site, but it is one of the best resources for finding local industry specific business and networking events. Tip - If you have good connections a great way to find events is to click on the “See Events Your Connections Are Attending” link.

13. Demonstrate knowledge by recommending books. What are the “Amazing” books about business or your industry that you have read? Why not be associated with them by endorsing them on your LinkedIn profile?

15. Nothing in business will every beat face to face interaction. Make a conscious effort to meet influential connections off line. Our online relationships are often strengthened by off line meet ups.

What other tips would you suggest to the Business Professional that wants to look “Amazing” on LinkedIn?

Greg is a Social Media trainer and workshop facilitator with the Digital Marketing Institute. He has also delivered lectures and short courses for leading organisations including SureSkills, Socialmedia.ie and The Michael Smurfit Business School.
Greg also works with the Ahain Group as a Social Business Consultant. He believes that in order to make social media work for your business you must have a clear business goal, a clearly defined strategy and make sure that everything you do is measureable.
Specialities include:
Social Media Training | Personal Branding |Social Business Consultancy | Social Strategy Workshops | Interview Techniques | Psychometric Profiling | LinkedIn Training | Facebook Training | Twitter Training | Blogging | Online Video and You Tube Training | Emerging Social Media (Pinterest, Foursquare, Instagram, Google+ etc.)
More information at: www.ahaingroup.com and www.careerscoach.ie
http://www.careerscoach.ie

Add Your Comment

http://twitter.com/fredchannel Fred

Nice list Greg.
What I would add in order to make your Amazing profile work much better (and see results faster) is being proactive in adding relevant people to your network. Very simple: you met someone new? just had an interview? exchanged a business card? ALWAYS ask: “Are you on Linkedin?”. It doesn’t matter if the other person replies yes or no, you’re answer will always be: “I’ll send you an invitation to stay in touch”.
Now, when you say “stay in touch” trust me, on LinkedIn is a lot easier to do that and it will pay off BIG time.

http://www.seefincoaching.com/blog Elaine Rogers

A great list indeed Greg – thanks for sharing.

The one that really bugs me is No 6 – I often get invites from group members whom I have never had an interaction with, and there is not one extra word put in besides the generic LinkedIn one.
I have written back to some people (the ones I do connect with) suggesting a personal note.
LinkedIn should take out the Friend option, even though I use it myself, but only for people I have met otherwise.

To be amazing is really to be oneself – honest, playful and interactive

Una Coleman

Very good as usual Greg. Would you say one of the measures of the success of your profile is how many people look at it per day? And, what number would you consider is a good number to have looking at one’s profile daily – considering there are 75m+ people on Linkedin.

Anonymous

Thanks Una. There i a good question. Maybe the answer is about who looks at your profile daily rather than how many? Quality over Quantity. If you are an Irish business only selling in Ireland one does not need or want to attract a large audience from the US, Asia etc.

I can get 10-50 views per day of my LinkedIn profile. With the vast majority of those people being Irish LinkedIn users. With about 5-10 invitations to connect per day. Very often those people may not be my target market and I do not end up connecting with.

I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this. So….your thoughts please!

Anonymous

Thanks as ever for your kind words. Yes, the generic invitation from a complete stranger is without doubt one of my biggest pet hates. I ignore these requests and move onto the people who genuinely want to form a business relationship.

Anonymous

Thanks for the comment Fred. No better man to be proactive on LinkedIn than you.

John Kamara

Great work buddy, I think most users dont understand the power of being amazing on linkedin. So thanks for sharing.

Margaretmara

Hi Greg,

Great blog post. Very specific and I will certainly be taking on board your suggestions. Thanks again.

Anonymous

Thanks Margaret. Really appreciate the comment.

http://www.michaelgholmes.com Mike Holmes

Its funny I was just wondering how to get more value out of LinkedIn and lo and behold you come out with this great piece. This is definitely a bookmarkable post. Great job!

Thanks for taking the time to leave such a lovely comment. Have al lovely weekend Anne.

Anonymous

Thanks for the comment Mike. Glad the post was timely. Honoured that you believe the post is Bookmarkable!

Nualan O’Brien

Great article Greg. Succintly put & practical.

Anonymous

Thanks Nualan

Facundo

Converting your offline database does work Greg, you are right. In my case, connecting to old colleagues (from an offline obscure period, ha!) has proven to be effective too in terms of generating opportunities with my current company

Anonymous

Thanks for the comment mate, You are right that very often old and even nearly forgotten colleagues can be real hidden jewels on LinkedIn.

http://www.btbtraining.com/blog Niall Devitt

Hi Greg, you are building up a super collection on LinkedIn articles, I would ask first time readers to check out some of your others – they won’t regret it! This next statement may make me unpopular but hey! In my opinion LinkedIn is the most misunderstood and probably the worst used of all the social media. The reason: because it is used by business people and a very large portion of them don’t have a clue yet plough on regardless.

http://kenoconnordata.wordpress.com/ Ken O’Connor

Hi Greg,Well done on an excellent article. I plan to review my own LinkedIn profile, as a matter of urgency, against each of your well articulated guidelines. As you know, I teach an adult education class, on “get more out of Google, and the internet”, in which I explain the benefits of a LinkedIn Profile – I will be referring my students to your excellent article in future. Rgds Ken

http://www.stress-solutions4life.com/ Catherine Connors

Great post Greg and a must read for anyone who wishes to make their profile more ‘amazing’, I’ll be taking some of your points onboard…..

Anonymous

Great post Greg. I’d add to your list that people should look into the Answers feature on LinkedIn. A great way to share your expertise and get more business. Also a great place to ask questions.

Anonymous

Ken

Really appreciate your comments. Very honoured that you will refer your students to this article.

Thanks

Greg

Anonymous

Thanks Frank

Anonymous

Appreciate the comments Catherine.

Anonymous

Comprehensive list Greg

Adding a few more important points. Apologies in advance if points mentioned already. Just back from a break and rushing about the place.

Headline – Surprised more people don’t use this. My headline reads “Career~Outplacement~Personal Branding Consultant. Inspiring Creativity, Increasing Visibility & Generating Career Smiles” The headline can help draw people to view your profile. I’ve been using “headlines” since 2007 to draw readers into my blog posts. The same principle applies to attract people to read your LinkedIn profile. Be creative and have some fun

Summary – It is important to have a summary. It is more important to get “you” across in your summary. Inject some personality. Bland will lose the reader. I use the word “I” in my summary to help soften this section.

Career History – Still read many profiles that have no (or little) content. Missing a perfect sales opportunity. Remember – facts, figures and achievements …. I won some outplacement work a few months back when a potential client read I had recruited in eng/pharma sectors.

Other points to stay attractive …..

Evolving document – Don’t be afraid to update content. Add anything new that will enhance your profile. For example – I have added that I spoke at the National College of Ireland Career Bootcamp in August.
Seek feedback – Get people who know you well to review your profile. I get clients to review my summary and headline. I ask the questions – “Do I get me across?” and “Would you pick up the phone?”

P.S Greg – Like the latest post – My comment is here to save time :-). I firmly believe “All good things come to those who give!!” Competition is for paranoid multinationals and business owners

Anonymous

Thanks John. Good luck with your profile.

Charles Moriarty

Excellent tips Greg, LinkedIn couldn’t have said it better themselves.

Regards
Charles

http://twitter.com/ann_donnelly Ann Donnelly

This is a great post Greg, thanks! Many people put minimal time into LinkedIn as it’s not as ‘sexy’ as Twitter or ‘friendly’ as Facebook. I’m guilty of this myself. These are some great tips and you’ve included all the steps needed to get the job done. I’ve done nearly all of them, but do need to put more time in on communicating in groups and make more effort connecting offline. Answering questions is also a good way to show how ‘amazing’ you are.

http://chriskulbaba.blogspot.com Chris Kulbaba

Greg, this is a very well written article. Personally, I agree with all your tips and have employed (or in teh stages of) using them all. LinkedIn has so many functions and features, it truly is as you hae said underutilized. Facebook has also started to try and incorporate some of the functionality of LinkedIn with applications such as ‘branchout”, so obviously this is a tool that works well.

Thanks for your time and expertise, I look forward to future blog items.

Chris Kulbaba MBTI/PD Facilitator, Career Transition Specialist

Anonymous

Thanks for you comments Chris. I am really interested to see if BranchOut takes off. It looks great, but seems to scare a lot of potential users away due its demand to bypass all your privacy settings. Do you have a blog or wesite link? Thanks, Greg.

Anonymous

Thanks Charles.

Anonymous

Ann

I am honoured to get your vote of confidence on this article. Thanks again.

Greg

Columfromkanturk

Point number 15 is really important, good idea to put this last.

Seann Farrell

Great article Greg and very helpful! Reminded me to update my status a lot more than I have. Thanks.

Anonymous

Glad you enjoyed it Seann. I will keep an eye out for your status updates;)

Anonymous

Colum, Yes people often become complacent online and forget about the real social networking “Face to Face”.

http://twitter.com/healthywords101 Jason Martin

Hey Greg,
If you want your linked in URL on your business card but prefer a uniformed look, I think it’s a good idea to set up a 301 redirect from a URL on your websites domain. E.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/linkedin.

I’ve done this for all my social media accounts. Haven’t asked for feedback but I’m sure it makes it easier for people to type and looks good on the business card.

Anonymous

Good advice Jason. Thanks for the tip.

Joe

Here’s my tip–and it’s cool. You are unique, but that doesn’t mean we need to know every detail of things you like, or, even more importantly, hear your description of yourself in the 3rd person. We also don’t care about some abstract metric you exceeded. Tell me what you do, and what you do uniquely, and that’s it.

http://www.diysolarpanels.net Clarke

Great post Greg it opened my eyes a bit of what I’m doing wrong and how I can improve my profile thanks for the work you put in this article and explaining step by step for people like me understand what is LinkedIn all about.

http://twitter.com/xcelbusiness Helen Cousins

You are another great example of a virtual worker Sian, and cutting out the commute is a big plus. I used to sub contract for a Big 4 firm when my children were small and techology wasn’t so advanced. It was about 14 years ago, and I worked mainly from home and encrypted files via email sorted us out! It doesn’t have to be high tech or hard to do.
This firm offered Jennifer the option immediately and it was all sorted before her notice would have expired. A classic win | win.
Thanks Sian, keep up the good (remote) work!
~Helen

Thanks Niall, I agree that it’s a great way to work. With determination (and Google / YouTube/ Skype and more), the tech stuff is simple really, and we shouldn’t be put off by it.
Early days, but I’ve an employee working remotely for me for the last month and it’s terrific. It gives us both flexibility. We meet once a week to agree the work and then we go and do it, collaborating online as we need to. It keeps us both focused and delivery driven
Kudos to Philip and Jennifer for sharing their story with us!
~ Helen

http://twitter.com/marketingdebbie TheMarketingShop.ie

Enjoyed the interview Helen. As a virtual marketer for several businesses who has worked alongside virtual employees in the past, this really is going to be the future for many businesses. I would totally agree with Jennifer that the impact on performance is positive as without the distractions of an office or a stressful commute, the quality of the hours you work is greater. It also enables an employer to retain employees who need a more flexible arrangement or increase their available skill-set as impact on the bottom line isn’t quite so significant. Great to see a positive account from both sides.

http://twitter.com/sageireland Sage Ireland

Great article that provides a good insight into the working practices of Accountants.

http://twitter.com/beatricewhelan Beatrice Whelan

Great article Helen, more of this type of thing please I found it really interesting that they didn’t use Cloud software to facilitate a mobile workforce. I’m wondering about the I.T support needed to keep her computer in the communications room running 24/7. If this is a standard machine I imagine it would eventually overheat whereas if the software was in the cloud this would all be managed by the hosting company and she could access it from any machine. However they have found a solution that is obviously working well for them.

Philip

We keep Jennifer’s machine in an air conditioned comms room so it’s kept pretty cool. After about three years we’ll replace it for about £500.

Warren Rutherford

Helen – great interview and insight into the virtual workforce and relationships. The demonstration of trust and respect by Richard and Jennifer towards each other (and I would suspect the other employees at Richard Place Dobson) is supported by a vibrant use of technology. As I move our offices to a more paperless situation I am quite encouraged. Thanks for the opportunity to review a great piece on virtual workers – and the businesses that help them thrive!

http://twitter.com/xcelbusiness Helen Cousins

Hi Warren
I’m delighted that you have been encouraged by the Richard Place Dobson example. Best of luck with the paperless move and maybe you’lll keep us posted!
Thanks Warren,
~Helen

http://www.denisefay.com/ Denise Fay

Niall – the very best of luck with all your existing and new projects. I don’t know how you do everything in 24 hours and still manage to make it look easy. I can’t believe it’s three years. Wow. Time flies!

And Sian, we’ll be saying that in three years time too. I’m thrilled for you – you did a great job when Niall was on honeymoon and I’m sure the content will still keep coming. (Note to self – finish that article and post!).

Thanks Denise – I’ve no idea how Niall fits everything in either. Big shoes to fill but I’ll do my best. The TYB community back up will keep me going I’m sure

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Lol Christina – thank you for your kind words

Eileen McCabe

Congratulations Sian and Best of luck to you Niall … always enjoy reading the valuable information on TYB !!

http://www.facebook.com/susan.payton Susan Payton

Congrats Sian! You’ll do a fabulous job.

Smallbiztrends

We’re so excited to get more of your time, Sian! And Niall — love what you’ve done for the site! Woo-hoo!

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks so much Anita – it’s an honour to be asked and I’m really looking forward to it

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks Susan, I’m looking forward to it

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks Eileen….and please keep reading

http://www.cendrinemarrouat.com Cendrine Marrouat

Congratulations! Truly deserved!

http://twitter.com/m4bmarketing Susan Oakes

Congratulations Sian and you will do a fantastic job. Niall all the best with your new and existing projects.

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thank you Susan

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks a million Cendrine – that means a lot to me

http://twitter.com/3keyscoach Elli StGeorgeGodfrey

Niall, you will be missed here at TYB. Thank you for inviting all of us to create a warm and fun group of bloggers. Best of luck to you!

Sian, I’m looking forward to working with you more here. You are such a natural replacement!

Heather Stone

Sian, Congratulations! We’ll all miss Niall but I think you’ll do an excellent job as Managing Editor of TYB. Looking forward to new and exciting things from you and the TYB community!

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks Elli, that’s a really lovely thing to say

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks Heather – I shall do my best

http://twitter.com/ballymountaccs Tom Holmes

What’s the world coming to – accountants taking over TYB – you’ll have to hang up the ledgers & spreadsheets lol Well done Sian – you’ll be a natural
Niall – good luck with your current & future ventures!

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks a mill Tom – will share the ledgers and spreadsheets with you still

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Thanks Tom!

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Thanks Heather, appreciate you saying so!

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Thanks Elli, I’ll still be around in the background.

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Thanks Susan!

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Thanks Anita, we’ve now got two great ladies steering the TYB ship

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Thanks Eileen.

http://www.sianphillips.ie/ Sian Phillips

Thanks Frederique

http://www.guardianaccountants.ie Colum Whelan

Thanks for the feedback Sian,
yes we like to think that by scoping a job and fulfilling the client’s needs
with the right staff, we can really deliver a good value service.

http://about.me/Lindeskog lyceum1776

Isn’t the best way of spending money on investing time and energy on your old customer? How much does it cost to get a new customer?

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